“Let me tell you how it's going to be,” the voice said. “You tell me where he is. I make a phone call. Some people go talk to him. You and I wait here, in his nice, warm house. When the people call me back to tell me they have what we need, we all go away, and everyone lives happily ever after. Sound good?”
This time, Ben did laugh. “Yeah. Like a fairy tale.”
He was five feet from the corner of the house, a gap that in his present circumstances looked as wide as the Grand Canyon. There was something just on the other side he could use. Assuming it was still there, of course. If it wasn't, even if he made it around the corner, he was dead. But Alex hadn't changed anything else. And regardless, it was his only chance.
“Listen, buddy, you're in a bad spot, I know. But here's the way it is. Maybe I'm bullshitting you. Maybe I'm not. But trust me on this, okay? When I ask you again? This one more time I'm going to ask you? If you don't tell me something I can work with, the thing you'll see a second later, the last thing you'll see ever, will be the mist that used to be your insides.”
Without letting any sign of it come to the surface, Ben tensed to move faster than he had ever moved in his life. Then he laughed, long and hard and with a confidence he absolutely didn't feel. The laughter was inappropriate and incongruous, and no matter how good the guy was, trying to process it was going to momentarily suck up a few precious neurons.
“Something funny?” the voice said.
“For me it is. He's in the tree right over you.”
The instant the last word was out of his mouth, Ben dove for the corner like he'd been shot out of a cannon. And it worked: the laughter, the momentary shift in the guy's focus to what was going on above him instead of in front, and good old action beating reaction-it was just enough. He hit the deck on his stomach like he was sliding into third base and heard the boom of the Taurus behind him, felt lead flying through the air just above his head. He rolled in close to the house, got his feet under him, and dove forward again.
The woodpile. There was always a tarp-covered half cord or cord of firewood here, stacked parallel to the side of the house and two feet away from it because his dad didn't want termites to have an easy jump from the wood to the foundation. And it was still here, thank God, not as much as he remembered but chest high. He scrambled to his feet and turned, his back to the house. He flexed his knees and dropped his hips low, getting his head and body below the top of the pile. He brought his palms up against it, his elbows in, his forehead pressed against the protruding ends of the logs.
And then the guy made a mistake. In his fear that Ben might clear the fence and escape, and in his confidence that Ben was effectively blind now, he followed in too fast. Ben tensed, forcing himself to wait the extra second, to let the guy narrow the gap, and then blasted up and through the wood like an offensive lineman crashing into a blocking sled. Two-foot lengths of hard white oak-splits, rounds, and everything in between-exploded out. Ben charged out behind them. He heard a heavy thud, heard the guy cry out, and then he was on him, wrapping his left hand around the barrel of the gun and twisting hard to the left, driving the other hand into the guy's throat, shoving him backward, slamming him back into the fence. The gun went off again but the muzzle was pointed away from him and then he felt the guy's trigger finger break and the gun tore free. He reversed direction instantly, bringing the gun in muzzle-first in a hammer fist grip, driving it into the guy's temple like he was pounding in a nail. The guy spun away and doubled over, his hands suddenly invisible, clearly reaching for a backup weapon. Ben took the Taurus in his right hand, put the front sight on the guy's back, and rolled the trigger. There was a flash from the muzzle and the gun kicked in his hand. The guy's body jerked as though he was trying to shrug something off, then he dropped to his knees. Ben kept the gun on him and moved in, wanting to shoot him again but hating the thought of the noise of a fourth discharge.
There was no need. The.410 ammunition had shredded the guy, and in the pale light of the moon Ben could see blood flowing from all over his back. The guy groped a hand around to the gore, then held it before his face. “Fuck me,” he whispered, his tone faintly wondrous, and pitched face-forward to the ground.
Ben moved in, keeping the gun on the guy. He turned him over with a foot and checked for a pulse in this neck. Nothing. He was done.
He retrieved the goggles he had dropped and got them back on, then picked up the Glock. He went back to the guy and pulled the goggles from his slack-jawed face. Caucasian, close-cropped hair, about thirty, maybe younger. That didn't tell him anything. His tactics had been good, though, at least until he'd followed Ben around the corner of the house. But that could be excused-he wouldn't have had a way of knowing how well Ben knew the terrain. And his equipment was good, too. The Taurus, of course; and his goggles were Night Optics, like Ben's.
He crouched next to the body for a moment, sucking wind, trying to clear his head and figure out what to do. A series of snapshot images clicked open and closed in his mind: Tossing a baseball with his dad. Throwing a Frisbee to Arlo. Katie, laughing, throwing barbecue sauce at him after he'd squirted her with a water gun. He looked down at the body and for a moment was paralyzed by the colliding past and present.
Come on, he thought. Focus. Three shots fired. Pretty damn loud. The lots were big in Ladera, though, typically separated by fences and trees that would suppress some of the sound. Could be people slept through it all, or convinced themselves it was something other than gunshots, or thought it might be gunshots but figured someone else would do something about it. Could be someone picked up the phone and called the police. He couldn't afford to wait around to find out.
He went through the guy's pockets quickly, not expecting anything. This one was better than the Russians. He was a pro. It wasn't like he was going to be carrying a business card.
A bunch of spare Taurus rounds. Useless. A SureFire E1E mini light. Same. And…
A car key. No rental agency fob or other identifying characteristics, but it belonged to a Volvo. He'd seen a few Volvos parked on the streets on his way in. A good bet one of them belonged to his new dead friend here. Or if not, then another one, somewhere within, say, a one-mile radius from the house. After all, the guy didn't parachute in here.
He dragged the body back behind the hot tub. He took the guy's goggles and the Taurus-the less physical evidence left at the scene, the better-and headed back over the fence and to his car. He drove away with the headlights off, switching them on again only when he was back on Erica. He parked far back in the Ladera Center parking lot. There were only two streets in and out of Ladera, and from here Ben could see both. If the police came, he would quietly drive away.
He waited, watching and thinking. Leave the guy, or move him? There were risks either way. If he left him, it wouldn't be long before someone saw the body. And a body in his brother's backyard was too close a connection to himself. Okay. This guy had to go for one last ride and be found somewhere else, if he was ever found at all.
After a half hour with no sign of police, he drove back to Escanyo and parked as he had before. He crossed the yard, hopped the fence, and walked over to the woodpile. He grabbed the tarp that had been covering it, got the guy onto it, and dragged him back to the fence. The tarp was plastic and sledded easily across the wet grass. At the base of the fence he rolled the guy into the tarp, managed to scoop the package up onto his shoulder, and then, using both hands and his head, shoved it over the side. From there it was an easy drag to the car.